The New Blockaders ‘Succès De Scandale’ C-38 (Advaita)

The New Blockaders’ contribution to the formative years of noise music is undeniable, however in recent years Richard Rupenus and company have lurched into a turbulent and less than satisfying new operation, uneven recordings and a number of unsatisfying releases casting shadow on the project’s legacy and creating a second stream of modern material which is far more difficult to pick through (if one can even locate and afford some of the more limited and extroverted items) and which constitute a more uneven presentation of the previous sonic and theoretical achievements of The New Blockaders through the project’s first two decades.

A seminal piece of The New Blockaders’ early works are recordings made at Modern Tower, captured and disseminated across official and unofficial releases in increasingly confusing edits, excerpts, reissues and revisitings. That horse is flogged again for ‘Succès Du Scandale’ which is described as incorporating excerpts from a previously unreleased 1984 performance at Modern Tower. Confusingly (and with The New Blockaders it could not really be any other way) the cassette’s Discogs entry attributes the affected piece to Richard and Philip Rupenus alone, excluding mention of recent The New Blockaders members – and suggesting the piece’s usage of the 1984 recordings is more extensive than a brief sampling.

That suggestion is borne out in the material, “Succès De Scandale I” an orgy of destruction with its unstoppable central cavalcade of tearing and screeching junk metal laced in a light tape distortion, and boosted by hardier kicks, thuds and smashes on either side of the stereo spectrum which fly out from the fringes of the piece. The central smash-up is glorious in itself but so insistent as to be desensitising, the harder garbage can kicks needed to give “Succès De Scandale I” its staccato impact – also summonsing a low-end growl to lurk in the vacant space of the piece. While denser than The New Blockaders’ early work – speaking to the track’s modern input – there is also the same celebration of anti-music, a joy of nothing found in the refuse of industry which links right back to ‘Changez Les Blockeurs’ even if the work itself isn’t to the same level of achievement.

The modern recast is in side B’s “Succès De Scandale II”, the scrap metal storm of “Succès De Scandale I” confined within a casing of hissing near-white noise, the previous threshing reduced to a sense of movement under the dominating thick layer of noise treatment, with almost continuous layers of contact microphoned detritus also scorched in withering distortion and welded against the piece’s torso. Fewer sonic fragments are let loose from this second dervish; outside some stuttering electronics murmur there’s little no lower frequency responsiveness, only small particles of feedback and occasional electronics residue escape from the densely packed centrifuge.

The small spaces between the elements of “Succès De Scandale I” are removed for “Succès De Scandale II”, condensing those destructive forces into a suffocating press of intentionally lifeless sound, the acoustic movement of the early material smothered into a more dispassionate expression of the project’s nothingness than the sonically powerful smash and crash of Messrs Rupenus’ 1980s junkpile.

Clearly Richard Rupenus isn’t up for debating what his legacy should be, and it’s for none of us to say. ‘Succès De Scandale’ has closer ties than many recent works, obviously in its borrowed sound componentry but also in being packaged with a t-shirt bearing The New Blockaders’ manifesto on its back. I can’t say I’ll be wearing that any time soon, but I don’t know if my fashion choice is a doubly negative anti, or par for the expectation.

Incapacitants’ Toshiji Mikawa adds some liner notes further emphasising the historical relevance of ‘Succès De Scandale I’, and given his acknowledged inspiration from early The New Blockaders recordings his assessment of the recordings – particularly “Succès De Scandale I” –  adds some credibility to ‘Succès De Scandale’ as an historical bridge. The cassette isn’t heyday Rupenus classicism, but it is a more resonant and rejective take on The New Blockaders than I’ve extracted from other recent releases.